The Prodigal Anti-Lemming
Registered Lemming Smasher
This topic is directed at those site moderators who have taken it upon themselves to disqualify a particular range of wrestling legends from hall of fame inclusion, and to those wrestling fans who care about wrestling history. Now please, bear in mind, it has been some time since I have visited the site, so if there has been a change in what I maintain is an incredibly slanted stance, then I am putting my foot in my mouth. If that is the case, please disregard this topic, and I do apologize in advance. However, I have done a search, and I detect no such change in bearing. Also, I am not posting this topic to be a prick, or stir up sh*t, or to shamelessly draw attention to myself. I am merely mounting an opinion that has been building up within me for several months. So bear with me, and hear me out:
That all having been said, I have thought about it for some time, and cannot deduce a viable or logical reason to actively not include specific wrestlers—legends, just as today’s crop of wrestlers that are deemed hall of fame worthy—because they qualify as “obscure” in the eye of the uninitiated, dare I say, the ignorant.
Before I continue my spiel, I’m well aware that my ongoing defense of the “old timers” may make me seem like one myself. Know that I am in my thirties, and that, while I may be a bit jaded towards the present wrestling scene in general, I am not of the stubborn notion that professional wrestling needs to “return to its roots” in order to be great. Nor would I ever submit a vote for a dead legend over a living one if I truly believed that the accomplishments of the more recent candidate outstripped those of the former (I did vote for Bret Hart over Terry Funk in the second to last ballot, after all). I am merely passionate about the subject of history, and when you attach the word “wrestling,” well, better yet.
Now, on with my point: Are we to just set aside and forget wrestlers of a certain time frame as if they are archaic remnants of the past? Is not the purpose of wrestling history, studying it, cultivating it, maintaining a hall of fame to begin with, to acknowledge these otherwise forgotten greats? Where would professional wrestling even be if not for the efforts of the William Muldoons, Jim Londos’ and Gorgeous Georges, all of whom played their own significant role in advancing the landscape of wrestling to its present state?
Had George not essentially originated many of the sports entertainment elements that are so predominant in the modern wrestling world, I would postulate that later stars such as Hulk Hogan would not have found an environment in wrestling in which they were able to thrive. Had there been no George, Hogan most likely would have become a rocker or a banker, there almost certainly would never have been a Rock ‘n’ Wrestling era at all, and wrestling most likely would not have attained the success that it has to date.
Yet, in spite of this, George and his ilk are summarily dismissed because they don’t meet your range of criteria, which amounts to, as near as I can guess, “inductees must have been active between 1965 and present.”
If we’re talking about a hall of fame with any legitimacy, time should really be of no relevance. It shouldn’t matter that “Strangler” Lewis put away the tights for good prior to the start of the Eisenhower administration, or that Frank Gotch has been buried in a Humboldt cemetery for 95 years and counting now.
To further put it in perspective, what would a baseball hall of fame be without Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth, a football hall of fame without Red Grange or Bronko Nagurski, a boxing hall of fame without Jack Johnson or Jack Dempsey? Many of the athletes mentioned are considered among the top five or ten of all-time in their chosen field. Knowing that, what sense does it make to bar Gotch, whose ring accomplishments measure favorably when compared with any modern great, because a group of people who might visit a site cannot be arsed to perform a simple keyword search and maybe 15 minutes of reading in order to better judge how well he stacks up to someone else on the ballot?
In closing, I fully acknowledge that there are those out there who know nothing of the industry prior to 1990, therefore inducing those to support a directive such as that which I am proposing may be like pulling teeth. Yet I maintain that if a true fan of wrestling has enough interest to care about submitting a vote in the first place, and if that person can determine the eligibility of a name they have probably heard of but know little about (say for instance, Bruno Sammartino), they can do the little bit of research required to determine the eligibility of a Joe Stecher or a Bill Longson. And if they still don’t want to do the research, well, they can always rely on those of us that post topics campaigning for a particular wrestler. Therefore, I am opening a petition directed towards the end goal outlined above.
Thanks for listening.
That all having been said, I have thought about it for some time, and cannot deduce a viable or logical reason to actively not include specific wrestlers—legends, just as today’s crop of wrestlers that are deemed hall of fame worthy—because they qualify as “obscure” in the eye of the uninitiated, dare I say, the ignorant.
Before I continue my spiel, I’m well aware that my ongoing defense of the “old timers” may make me seem like one myself. Know that I am in my thirties, and that, while I may be a bit jaded towards the present wrestling scene in general, I am not of the stubborn notion that professional wrestling needs to “return to its roots” in order to be great. Nor would I ever submit a vote for a dead legend over a living one if I truly believed that the accomplishments of the more recent candidate outstripped those of the former (I did vote for Bret Hart over Terry Funk in the second to last ballot, after all). I am merely passionate about the subject of history, and when you attach the word “wrestling,” well, better yet.
Now, on with my point: Are we to just set aside and forget wrestlers of a certain time frame as if they are archaic remnants of the past? Is not the purpose of wrestling history, studying it, cultivating it, maintaining a hall of fame to begin with, to acknowledge these otherwise forgotten greats? Where would professional wrestling even be if not for the efforts of the William Muldoons, Jim Londos’ and Gorgeous Georges, all of whom played their own significant role in advancing the landscape of wrestling to its present state?
Had George not essentially originated many of the sports entertainment elements that are so predominant in the modern wrestling world, I would postulate that later stars such as Hulk Hogan would not have found an environment in wrestling in which they were able to thrive. Had there been no George, Hogan most likely would have become a rocker or a banker, there almost certainly would never have been a Rock ‘n’ Wrestling era at all, and wrestling most likely would not have attained the success that it has to date.
Yet, in spite of this, George and his ilk are summarily dismissed because they don’t meet your range of criteria, which amounts to, as near as I can guess, “inductees must have been active between 1965 and present.”
If we’re talking about a hall of fame with any legitimacy, time should really be of no relevance. It shouldn’t matter that “Strangler” Lewis put away the tights for good prior to the start of the Eisenhower administration, or that Frank Gotch has been buried in a Humboldt cemetery for 95 years and counting now.
To further put it in perspective, what would a baseball hall of fame be without Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth, a football hall of fame without Red Grange or Bronko Nagurski, a boxing hall of fame without Jack Johnson or Jack Dempsey? Many of the athletes mentioned are considered among the top five or ten of all-time in their chosen field. Knowing that, what sense does it make to bar Gotch, whose ring accomplishments measure favorably when compared with any modern great, because a group of people who might visit a site cannot be arsed to perform a simple keyword search and maybe 15 minutes of reading in order to better judge how well he stacks up to someone else on the ballot?
In closing, I fully acknowledge that there are those out there who know nothing of the industry prior to 1990, therefore inducing those to support a directive such as that which I am proposing may be like pulling teeth. Yet I maintain that if a true fan of wrestling has enough interest to care about submitting a vote in the first place, and if that person can determine the eligibility of a name they have probably heard of but know little about (say for instance, Bruno Sammartino), they can do the little bit of research required to determine the eligibility of a Joe Stecher or a Bill Longson. And if they still don’t want to do the research, well, they can always rely on those of us that post topics campaigning for a particular wrestler. Therefore, I am opening a petition directed towards the end goal outlined above.
Thanks for listening.
